Easter revision links and tips

The Easter holidays are a critical time for revision and final coursework improvements.

This is the time to be revising the exam topics, practising questions and making any final improvements to your production work. It's also important to have a break too! Make sure you give yourself a couple of proper days off amongst the school work. 

Coursework deadline

The coursework deadline is Friday 25 April - all details on this blogpost here. Please remember that although the production work is due after Easter your Statement of Intent cannot be changed after 31 March so whatever we have on that date will be your final Statement of Intent. 

Exam revision links

Here's what you need to revise with links to the original blogposts:

Media Paper 1 - Monday 19 May (afternoon)

Section A: Language and Representation

Unseen analysis

• Revise media language and representations - including theory - as well as looking back at your assessment LRs across the course. Many of these had an unseen question so look at the mark schemes and feedback to help prepare for this question.
• For the unseen question, revise our work on Media codes and reading an image from Year 12. 
• MIGRAIN index from Year 12 is here.
• Original lesson slide PDFs can be found on Google Drive here (you'll need your Greenford login to access).

Advertising and Marketing

• CSPs: Score hair cream and Sephora Black Beauty Is Beauty.
• Final index is here.
• You can find the original lesson slide PDFs on Google Drive here.

Music Video

• CSPs: Old Town Road and Ghost Town
• Final index is here.
• You can find the original lesson slide PDFs on Google Drive here.

Section B: Industry and Audience

Film Industry

• CSP: Blinded By The Light
• Final index is here.
• You can find the original lesson slide PDFs on Google Drive here.

Radio

• CSPs: BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat and War of the Worlds (1938).
• Final index is here.
• You can find the original lesson slide PDFs on Google Drive here.

Newspapers

• CSPs: The Daily Mail and the Guardian newspaper and websites.
• Final index will appear here when posted.
• You can find the original lesson slide PDFs on Google Drive here.

Media Paper 2 - Thursday 5 June (afternoon)

Unseen text analysis

• Revise media theories for this question - the question often asks you to apply a theory to an unseen text. 
• MIGRAIN index from Year 12 is here.
• Original lesson slide PDFs can be found on Google Drive here (you'll need your Greenford login to access). 

Television

• CSPs: Capital and Deutschland 83.
• Final index is here.
• You can find the original lesson slide PDFs on Google Drive here. 

Magazines

• CSPs: GQ and The Gentlewoman.
• Final index is here.
• You can find the original lesson slide PDFs on Google Drive here. 

Online, Social and Participatory Media

• CSPs: Taylor Swift and The Voice.
• Final index is here.
• You can find the original lesson slide PDFs on Google Drive here. 

Videogames

• CSPs: The Sims FreePlay and Horizon Forbidden West.
• Final index is here.
• You can find the original lesson slide PDFs on Google Drive here. 

The majority of Paper 2 will be THREE 25-mark essays on your in-depth topics. AQA states for your extended response questions:

“You will be rewarded for your ability to construct and develop a sustained line of reasoning which is coherent, relevant, substantiated and logically structured.” This means plan and write an essay with a clear and convincing argument!

The structure for the 25-mark questions in Paper 2 is as follows:

• Q2: evaluation of theory question - you MUST focus on the theory and simply use CSPs for evidence
• Q3: contexts question (e.g. social and cultural contexts, political or economic contexts etc.)
• Q4: synoptic question - more details below

Q4: Synoptic question

The final question in Paper 2 will always be the synoptic question – which requires you to demonstrate knowledge of the whole two-year course of study. AQA states:

“Question 4 is a synoptic question in which you will be rewarded for your ability to draw together different areas of knowledge and understanding from across the full course of study.”

How do we do this? Answer: Key concepts - Language, Representations, Audience, Industries. In your answer make sure that you are addressing 2-3 of the key concepts in responding to the question. This will demonstrate your knowledge of the whole course - but make sure you do stay focused on the question!

You can look through this AQA Specimen Paper 2 paper to familiarise yourself with the structure of the paper. Note that several of the CSPs have changed since this specimen paper was produced.

Revision links, resources and guidance

We've got plenty of resources to help you with your revision and preparation for the upcoming exams.

You'll be given eight full practice papers to take away for Easter - four Paper 1 and four Paper 2. Make sure you collect those from your exam teacher.

Here are some sample questions and answers we've worked on in exam revision lessons in previous years. We'll be adding to this document in our revision lessons after Easter but you may want to look through this for exemplar answers and help revising. Note that many of the CSPs have changed so we'll be updating these after Easter. You'll also need your Greenford Google login for this resource as it is only for GHS Media students.

We also gave you a paper copy of the Theoretical Perspectives resource which covers all the theories in the A Level Media specification. Let us know if you didn't get one! Our advice is to use this simple theory revision sheet and fill one in for all of the named theorists. If you are confident in the arguments for and against certain theorists you will be able to answer 'How useful' or 'How valid' evaluation of theory questions.

On the subject of theories, we've collated all of Media Magazine's Theory Drop articles on the named theories into one PDF document. It's a great way to revise the theories - remember AQA's suggestion that for each named theory you create a bullet point summary followed by a table of reasons to agree/disagree with the key ideas. You'll need your Greenford Google login for the theory drop link.

Finally, here's a short blog on what makes a good flashcard - always useful to get top tips on effective revision techniques.

How to revise

Revision is a very personal thing and everyone has different techniques. Here's a video on YouTube with top tips for A* A Level revision: 

Personally, I strongly recommend using flash cards (they are often called record cards if you are trying to buy them online or in WHSmiths). The simple act of distilling topics into a few key words or phrases to put on the card will seriously help in remembering the key information in the final exams. I have spare flash cards in DF07 if you'd like some. Try creating three sets of cards:

• Terminology/key words
• Theories
• CSPs

Chat GPT for revision

Although we've correctly told you to stay well away from AI and ChatGPT for coursework, we've heard of some excellent ideas in terms of using AI to revise. If you type out an answer to an exam question, you can ask ChatGPT to mark it by clearly giving the prompt of the exam board, paper and number of marks.

Other ideas include asking ChatGPT to quiz you on a particular topic or come up with example questions.

Revision example and useful resources - thank you Assia!

One of our former Year 13 Media students, Assia, very kindly shared some of her revision resources with us when she left Greenford. These are notes on CSPs which you may find useful but I'd also recommend creating your own similar resources for the CSPs to help you remember the key details. By the way, this is what an A grade student looks like! You'll need your Greenford Google login to access these and note that some of the CSPs have changed this year:

• Advertising - Score 
• Film - Blinded By The Light
• Radio - War of the Worlds and BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat

Additional revision resources

If you want to mix up your Media revision a little then you can always read around the subject or look through our Factsheet archive for topics you're struggling with. 

Anything you read in our Media Magazine archive will help to give you a wider perspective on media debates and every issue has several articles which focus on interesting examples, theories and debates that will help you in the Media exams. You'll find our Media Magazine archive here. 

Similarly, you have access to our whole Media Factsheet archive if there are any particular topics or theories you want to revise in more detail. Look at these for example: 

• How to revise for A Level Media exams
• Exploring theoretical perspectives to print magazines
• Channel 4: an overview and update
• Understanding digital convergence
• BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat
• Using theory
• The BBC: an overview and update

If you want to test your knowledge of the complete subject content, you can find it on the AQA website here. Look at the menu on the left-hand side - under media language, media representation etc. you'll find everything that could come up in exams: 

Walk-and-talk Paper 1

As promised, we'll be doing a walk-and-talk mock exam to practice the timing and style of questions for Paper 1. This will be in the second week back after Easter so be prepared! 

Good luck with your revision!